Not Yet Uhuru

Once the South African poet and freedom fighter Mzwakhe Mbuli
seemed poised on the brink of a "world music" career. After cutting
his first album in a truck and composing his second in solitary
confinement, he had recorded and released Resistance Is Defence
under the auspices of Trevor Herman, the white expat who along with
fellow expat Jumbo Vanrenen conceived 1985's The Indestructible
Beat of Soweto, which put both Zulu-based mbaqanga and the
Earthworks label on the map at a time when apartheid was a fortress
and Afropop barely a rumor. Just a few years later, in 1992, with
apartheid crumbling and Afropop attracting an intense cult in
Europe and the U.S., Resistance Is Defence was a formal coup,
commandeering the genteel professionalism symbolized by Paul
Simon's Graceland and Mbongeni Ngema's Sarafina! in the
service of a muscular groove with angry, sardonic words to match. It was a
musical leap for a heroic wordsmith--an artist famous for rising up
to recite at rallies and funerals, then taking off a few steps
ahead of the police. But at that still uncertain political moment,
it was also outspoken enough to make me wonder whether, if things
deteriorated in South Africa, Mbuli would ever consider becoming an
expat himself.

Fortunately, things didn't deteriorate in South Africa, as far
as any outsider could tell; soon Nelson Mandela was president. But
Afropop faltered. As Celtic and Cuban became the hot "world music"
trends, Earthworks switched distribution from major Virgin to indie
Caroline to strictly African Stern's, and a new Afroprofessionalism
lite--sometimes folky, sometimes dancey, concentrating on artists
no longer resident in Africa--was nurtured by boutique labels like
Putumayo and Tinder. Concomitantly, Mbuli dropped from sight here--no
records, no tours. But he remained very active musically in a
democratic South Africa whose pop showed signs of the same kind of
ferment that stirred postcolonial Africa and Jamaica in the '60s.

Recorded for EMI, the music Mbuli has released since 1992--four
albums, of which I've heard three--lacks the focus and power
of Resistance Is Defence, as far as any outsider can tell. "I am no
longer the same," he swore sweetly on 1994's Izigi (Footsteps), yet
his songs of reconciliation rarely conveyed the personal necessity
of his songs of condemnation, and his strongest recent release is
the most controversial--1996's Kwazulu Natal, whose outrage at
Zulu-on-Zulu crime gave rise to a press conference in which old ANC
man (and half Zulu) Mbuli joined representatives of the reactionary
Zulu Inkatha party in pleas for domestic peace. While not excluding
critique, Mbuli's EMI music often seems unnecessarily ingratiating,
as if he was more comfortable artistically when apartheid was there
to defy, and when there was no kwaito, the booming Mandela-era
style whose reflexive materialism and functional pulse take off
from American rap and European house. In 1997, he surprised his
secular-political following with the religious-themed Umzwakhe
Ubonga Ujehova, which although it doesn't approach the vocal glory
of Herman's 1998 Gospel According to Earthworks compilation ended
up one of Mbuli's six gold albums, which in South Africa signifies
sales of 25,000. If there hasn't been a follow-up of some sort,
it's not because Mbuli's career is foundering. It's because in
October 1997 he was put in prison for bank robbery, and he's been
there ever since.

Judging the merits of this charge will be difficult enough in
the courtroom; from here, it's impossible. Mbuli is a notoriously
bigheaded troublemaker who gathered more than his share of enemies
back when he manned the ANC's cultural affairs desk, and many are
skeptical of his claim that he was set up by apartheid-trained
police and government officials whose drug and arms dealing he was
about to expose. But some facts are undisputed. Mbuli definitely
was the target of an unsolved murder attempt in 1996. Swaziland
police have definitely reported that tips from Mbuli led to drug
busts involving prestigious suspects. He definitely was arrested in
possession of a bag--which some pro-Mbuli accounts inaccurately
refer to as an envelope--containing currency just stolen from a
nearby bank. (He was lured, he insists, by an anonymous phone call
promising murder leads, supposedly delivered in that bag).
Strangely, the bank's surveillance cameras were out of order the
day of the crime, and no eye-witness at a June hearing could place
Mbuli or his accused accomplices at the scene--even though the
singer is a well-known and highly recognizable six-four. One of the
arresting officers has now been reported to have committed suicide.
And most striking, this courageous artist and honored apartheid
fighter, this culture hero who performed at Mandela's inauguration,
will definitely have been detained for almost 16 months without
bail when and if his twice-postponed trial begins February 5.

Despite the bag, and with all respect for some credible
counsel to the contrary, I think it's quite possible Mbuli was
framed, and am convinced that without witnesses the prosecution
case is fatally flawed regardless. But even if there are no
government officials conspiring against the man, even if working
South Africans black as well as white now perceive armed robbery as
a problem-not-symptom requiring draconian punishment, 16 months of
detention without trial seems more like apartheid than uhuru to me.
Maybe--maybe--Mbuli is making up the drug running he cites in the
accompanying interview. But do you really think he's making up the
dog bites? Continuing economic brutality we could see coming, But
we were naive enough to hope that the police state would wither
away even so--and to believe that if democracy means anything, then
the impossible balancing act the ANC government is stuck with
deserves and in fact demands artistic scrutiny.

Not that such scrutiny is in any sort of vogue at the moment--in
Jamaica, it took a decade, and every case is different anyway.
It isn't altogether surprising that after generations of struggle
many South Africans would just as soon not hear about it in a
popular music that has always made lifting spirits its first
priority, and I very much doubt Mbuli's enemies, such as they are,
fear his art per se. Yet oddly, or perhaps not, he's unique among
South African popular musicians of his stature in his refusal to
let up on the scrutiny.

Right, Mbuli swore he was no longer the same--but a born
troublemaker usually remains one. And right, SA pop is in
postcolonial ferment--but SA pop is pop indeed. The roots styles
Earthworks and others showcase have always been rather longer on
guts than the likes of Brenda Fassie, Mango Groove, and the generic
reggae superstar Lucky Dube, and for many reasons--most prominently
the market for escape and the strictures of apartheid radio--political
content has been rare. Kwaito prizes street smarts and
the usual hip hop posturing and speaks to a youth for whom
antiapartheid politicization already seems like history. So when
Mbuli spells out "G--for Joy/U--for Youth/N--for Knowledge/S--for
Psychology" or ponders the "Freedom Puzzle" ("To the bosses and
farmers the meaning is different/To the rich and poor the meaning
is different/ . . . To Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola the meaning is
different") or praises "the only continent in the world shaped like
a question mark," he's performing useful work no matter how
bigheaded he may be. And if he beats this rap, I like to think that
he'll emerge revitalized, even lionized--that the South Africans
who care so much more about him than any theoretical "world music"
audience will listen even harder and care even more.

I also like to think that nobody will try to murder him again.

The head of Mzwakhe's support campaign is Gill Lloyd, Artsadmin in
London, Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial St, London E16LS, 44-171-247-5102,
44-171-247-5103 fax. A U.S-based letter-writing campaign
has been organized by Dorothy Flynn, PO Box 390058, Cambridge MA
02139, 781-440-9248, mzwakhe4u@aol.com. A best-of including what
Herman describes as three new "prison" tracks will be released by
South African EMI to coincide with the trial. Like all of Mbuli's
albums it well be available here from Stern's, 71 Warren Street,
NYC 10007.